St Etienne chief Damien Comolli is happy to see former club Tottenham doing so well this season.

Heurelho Gomes, Younes Kaboul, Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Luka Modric, Gareth Bale, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Danny Rose were all signed by Comolli when he was sports director of Spurs.

Comolli, 37, told The Sun: "I don't think of this as some sort of revenge that the players we bought are doing so well - I'm very pleased it has worked out.

"The day Daniel called me and said he wanted to make changes, I told him he was being too quick but there was a lot of pressure on him and he said it was something he had to do. That's football, it happens, but I knew the players would prove themselves. I never had any doubts about them.

"I said this would be the first team to have been bottom in October that could go on and qualify for Europe and they nearly did.

"I give Harry full credit for adding a resilience which wasn't there before but he had very good players to work with.

"When he was manager at Portsmouth and at West Ham he used to ask me about various French players. He hasn't been in touch since he took over at Spurs, though."